2024 is the 20th year of clinical studies conducted as part of the STAMPEDE (Systemic Therapy in Advancing or Metastatic Prostate Cancer: Evaluation of Drug Efficacy) trial, a series of investigational approaches to initial therapy for patients with high-risk prostate cancer. Patient accrual has now ended, but practice-changing data continue to emerge from STAMPEDE. New agents, regimens, and optimized treatment combinations have been assessed in patients whose tumors already metastasized or were localized but judged highly likely to progress.

Noel Clarke, MBBS, FRCS, ChM, FRCS (Urol), Consultant Urological Surgeon and Professor of Urological Oncology at the Christie at Salford Royal Hospitals in Manchester, said the study is a multi-arm, multi-stage trial in which the current standard of care has continually been compared during the past 20 years with various candidate interventions tested against it. 

“Multiple thousands of patients have taken part in the trial,” Clarke said. “It has changed the standard of care serially in the last decade and has given a fantastic body of clinical and scientific material to work on, which helps us to understand prostate cancer, its natural history, the effect of different treatments, and the biology of prostate cancer, helping us to design future treatments.”

OncTimesTalk correspondent Peter Goodwin met up with Professor Clarke at his office in Manchester, England, and asked him about findings and clinical take-home messages that have come out of the STAMPEDE studies. They also discussed translational research the investigators are now conducting in their ongoing battle to fight prostate cancer.